NancyGormezano

That looks fabulous Robert!

Yay Steve! Happy Birthday

You do not have to do anything special for the camera background color. A:M will make the alpha channel black (or totally transparent) for where the background is not obscured by any models. If you turn on alpha buffer in A:M (when rendering tga files, qt movies) - you are essentially creating an 8 bit channel in addition to the RGB 8 bit color channels that defines the opacity of each pixel. In A:M the alpha channel will contain white for totally opaque and black for totally transparent. Try rendering a simple image into tga format with alpha buffer ON - the sky/background color will appear to be black - If you bring that image into any other program that understands alpha channels, ie tga format - you will be able to composite this image with another background.

After you've selected the 5 cps that make the 5 pt patch - the green "donut" tool should light up/become active - click that button. However, sometimes the donut doesn't light up (for some unknown reason) - in that case there are steps to try to force it to show: 1) select the 5 cps, hit "." to select the other cps, then hit "." again to reselect the 5 cps (donut should light up), if not, then 2) select 5 cps - hit "hide" so that only the 5 cps are left showing. Reselect the 5 cps. Donut should show. if not, then 3) then there is probably something funny with the 5 cps and the splines, - sometimes, but not often - and you don't think the splines are wrong - save/close the model and reopen and reselect. if not, then 4) respline the area. last resort.

Hi Remy - looking good - One thing I notice is that you have lots of places where more than 2 splines meet/cross - Those places will cause peaking/creasing. In A:M you will have to use 5 pt patches instead to minimize that. There are some restrictions (creasing wise) of using them in combo with hooks, etc - but here's a general diagram for converting.

I'm not sure of the look that you will be going for but, I have some photos that I took of Torajan skulls/bones on a trip to Sulawesi (Indonesia) a long time ago. The Toraja people have the custom of placing their dead in caves on mountain sides. The wooden caskets decay and the descendants arrange and rearrange the collections of ancestor's bones thruout the ages. If you don't already have reference photos, my photos might serve as reference for "grunging" up the skull, and the teeth. Let me know if you'd like them. These bones/skulls are highly grunged from being exposed, as well as being asymmetric, with imperfectly aligned and many missing teeth. I think I like the AO lighting better for a clean, laboratory look. Just depends on the style you are going for.

Nice skull ! Terrific job. This guy must have had dental insurance. Maybe not so perfect teeth would be interesting?

I don't think it's the emitter (just tried - 1:25) - it's some other setting - either in your render settings (AO) - or some property of the hair system ... density?, dynamics?, collision?, roughness? etc - can you upload the hair material ? EDIT: uploaded another emitter example in previous post in case you missed it

You betcha - I wouldn't be doing hair if it took 7 hours/frame. I have to wonder Do you also have AO on? - and Roberts question about the size of the image for the leaf shape is a good one. You don't need a high resolution image. And I would also wonder about the alpha channel for the leaf shape as well - transparency (anywhere) will also increase render times - In my testing - that I just ran (15j plus) - I took Orkarella - rendered at 1280x960, 5 pass, soften ON, default lighting, alpha on - took 33 secs (or 13 secs at 640 x 480). When I switched the image for all the hair systems, to a leaf shape (approx 400 x 400) with a more complicated outline - render took 1:10 minutes. Have you tried rendering with 15j plus? 15i might have a problem? EDIT: - 3rd example just tried with a more complicated emitter image - ie more transparency, increased thickness of emitter to make more overlapping of transparency areas - and still only took 5 mins

Nice!

Interesting - looks terrific! What is controlling the direction of the knee or elbow bend? a switch?

In your example screen captures - I see many differences in the surface settings besides changing the transparency (eg line settings, gradient, specularity, color) - when I take your model and ONLY change transparency I do not get any change in the line widths. 5 pass. The difference that appears above the horizon is a known issue - you would need to add a background model (eg dome) to obscure the empty "sky/background color"

You would probably be better off doing the rigging first, before decaling, unless you don't mind the possibility of having to redo some of it. You may find that you need to change splines for rigging, which has the possibility of messing with the decals. Also, not knowing which rig you will be installing - and the method you will be using - it is important to remember that if you export from an action during the rigging process - that decals don't always survive the way you intended - and rework/cleanup will be required. There may be other situations that also have problems with decals (can't remember what, however) Great character - good potential for interesting expressions!

In my observation, it seems that displacement behaves differently depending on how the pattern aligns with the splines - I used the same image for displacement and color (to show how it aligns), using gray values of 0, 128, 255 (tga), applied to flat grid, but did not cover the whole grid. 4 pass no soften. I haven't tried using exr images for decal.

I believe you will need something to "blur" for the "sky/background" I also wonder, if there are no lights and no objects - what is there to blur? but just the blue color? You can add a rotoscope - or some dome type object to fill the "sky/background" and to be blurred

Try this: 1) apply blush decal to model 2) set the blush decal color = 0% (in the model) 3) start a new relationship - New/pose/percentage 4) in the relationship - turn on "show more drivers" 5) Relationship should start off with % of pose slider = 100%; then set decal color % = 100% 6) move % of pose slider to 0%, set color % = 0% 7) close relationship window, save model

I don't have a project - but if I look at John's example movie here - I see that when the transparent emitter and a sprite image with an alpha channel occlude - there are artifacts. Not sure if the sprite is in front of emitter or vice versa in his example. It does not seem to matter if the sky or ground is the background. I'm guessing that John was using a sprite image that had an alpha channel, as well as that the emitter surface patches were made 100% transparent (not sure if he did it with setting surface property or with a cookie cut patch image) EDIT: - maybe it's also related to having additive color =ON as well?

The default color for the ground is not set to orange - it's white - it looks orange because of the default lighting in the default chor - The default light colors are rim/klieg type = orange, fill/sun type = blue, and key/sun type= white - you can change the colors to whatever you want.

I did my part by posting a link to "Then Came the Plagues" to my cousin's facebook wall (she has billions of bff's) - I suggested she should get her kids, and her mother to add that little ditty to their Passover Seder Haggadah. The reading of the plagues is my favorite, favorite part of Passover. I love the Plagues.

click doesn't always work - space bar does - that's a better way

are you sure the eyelash doesn't move ? most of the time that is a screen refresh problem with hair if it appears to be stuck. Click in window - should clear it up

And I would add - make your klieg lights have volumetric effect =ON Similarly to what Holmes suggested, here's a project where the model contains both red and blue volumetric klieg lights, and the action rotates the model (so no action objects required) You can also model the housing - but not sure you will need it rotate.prj policelightnoblursmall2pass.mov

character looks great - the sss skin has possibilities - but what's with the shadow in the eyeballs? is that because of sss? reflections?

ahhhh...yes multiple emitters in 1 hair system being colored by 2 different images still works - I had set the the length of 2nd emitter to 0% - but when changed to 100% - it worked! Now figure out how to make spec color of emitter different than surface spec color please, please, pleeeeesseee.

Umm...that was 2005...so hair works differently now in 15jplus, and now again, differently than it worked in 15e. In 2005, I had 1 hair system, that had 2 emitters, where each emitter used the same image (could have been different images) for the "leaves", but the coloring of each emitter was tinted/driven by a different decal image applied to the same group surface - ie there was 1 decal container applied to the canopy surface - The decal container had 2 images, where the type for both of the images in the decal container was set to "other" and the property the image was driving was the diffuse color of one of the hair emitters. Therefore I could mix and match tintings, colorings of the emitters (via changing decal images) as well as experiment with using different images (shapes and colors) for the emitters. I don't think having 2 emitters for 1 hair system works the same any more (I can't get it to work the same) - so would probably have to have 2 hair systems (each with 1 emitter) if you want 2 different looking leaf emitters on the same surface (ie the canopy group), being driven by 2 different decal containers. As for hiding the canopy group, or making it invisible - I did a trick then, which became not necessary in 15e, but might be necessary again in 15jplus. The trick was - I have a small 100 x 100 tga image which is essentially an empty alpha channel (all black alpha channel) - and I add it to the canopy group as a patch image (NOT as a decal) and I set the type to cookie-cut - therefore making the canopy invisible, but doesn't make the hair emitter on the group invisible. In 15e - one didn't need that trick, one could set the group surface specular color, transparency, other surface properties to be different than the emitter surface properties - but in 15jplus - I have yet to figure out how to have different properties - I can not seem to find the secret formula for setting the spec color for the hair emitter to something other than white (and also be different from the group surface spec color) - if you figure that out - please, please let me know. It is driving me batty.